TPP 018: 11-year-old Asher Shares Challenges and Strategies Surrounding His Social Life

Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children

Debbie Reber

Education, Kids & Family, Parenting

4.8 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2026

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this special kid’s POV edition of the podcast, Asher answers questions from listeners — specifically our kid audience — about his social life. Like many differently-wired kids, social scenes aren’t always smooth sailing for Asher. He sometimes struggles to pick-up on others’ cues and his occasionally intense emotional reactions to certain situations can be off-putting to other kids. We talk about it all in this episode, as Asher opens up about not only what’s challenging for him in relationship to other kids, but what strategies he’s using to get through these challenges and maintain friendships, something that is very important to him. Questions answered in this episode: What are your friendships like? What kind of challenges have you had in your friendships and how have you handled them? What happens when you have a meltdown in front of a friend? What do you do when kids are mean to you or call you names like “weirdo?” What advice do you have for kids starting a new school? How do you manage group situations that don’t go your way? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:30.5	Hey, it's Debbie. For the month of March, Playback Friday episodes are focused on the complex
0:35.6	social lives of our kids.
0:42.2	If your child is struggling to find their people, navigating tricky peer dynamics, or just feeling out of step socially, these episodes from the archives are for you.
0:47.7	And today's episode is actually one of the very first episodes I ever recorded.
0:51.7	And it features a conversation between me and my then 11-year-old.
0:56.1	Talk about a throwback.
0:59.9	Welcome to the Tilt Parenting Podcast, a podcast featuring interviews and conversations aimed
1:05.1	in inspiring, informing, and supporting parents raising differently wired kids.
1:09.4	I'm your host, Debbie Reber, and today's
1:11.6	episode features another conversation with my 11-year-old son, Asher. As I've mentioned in
1:16.8	previous podcasts, we are getting lots of feedback from parents who say that they're co-listening
1:21.4	to the Asher kid-focused episodes with their kids, and that they like hearing from another
1:26.7	kid who sounds like them and is going through some of the same challenges as they are.
1:31.5	So last week I reached out to members of the Tilt community and people on our Facebook page and asked for questions from these kid listeners directed specifically to Asher.
1:40.2	We got a lot of responses, many of which were all about Asher's social life, how he makes friends,
1:46.2	what he does when confronted with mean kids, and that sort of thing.
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